Within 50 years of the first email being sent, everything from election systems, power grids, nuclear power plants, gas pipelines to hospital systems can be held hostage with ransomware. Nicole Perlroth starts from the Cold War era to explain how we got here. With many interesting stories, and a hard-hitting, engaging narrative, it’s an absolute must-read on an escalating war with consequences that impact all of us.
I think if there is one book you should read to understand the sociopolitical information warfare on social media happening daily, this is it. Peter Pomerantsev uses his first-hand experience and personal stories to write an extremely well-researched book whose narrative and language is easily accessible.
One of the best books I read in 2021. Though I bought it for the two keywords in the title, it went far beyond that. There’s travelogue, technology, culture and community, future and sometimes even a bit of contemplative philosophy, and together, it provides fantastic perspective and insights into rural China.
This is an excellent framing for the times we live in. We’re in a complex age, and we continue to try to make it certain and efficient using everything from personality tests to AI. But this is at the risk of losing the things that got us here- from scenario planning to creativity, imagination, and shared understanding. Great perspectives and a very accessible narrative style.
Cathy O’Neil does a great job of highlighting the dark side of “software is eating the world” as biases are being codified into systems as Weapons of Math Destruction. Multiple examples are used to understand the three characteristics of this phenomenon – scale, opacity and damage. “Algorithms are opinions embedded in code”, and right now, we’re not doing a great job of it.